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Show I SPORTUGHT 1 Calumet Horses Can't Win 'Em All I Bv GRANTLAND RICE PHIS HAS BEEN a rough year on champions. Notre Dame fell. Joe Louis tottered and was badly beaten. And now Calumet stable and the Jones boys are running second in the Big Money stakes after taking top honors in 1946, 1947, 1948 and 1949. Brookmeade's able stable, owned by Mrs. Dodge Sloan I tft'""s and trained by , awf.- J Preston Burch, is tZZ, now in front with js Vanderbilt closing n ' ''in from third '1 place, f S 1 Both Calumet I " 4 ,i 1 I anii Vanderbilt ,i,.;i:,:,).4 are on their Grantland Rice way to C a 1 1-fornia 1-fornia where the Hollywood track and Santa Anita are offering offer-ing a flock of purses from $100,-000 $100,-000 to $230,000 with 510,000 and $50,000 pick-ups scattered all over the Western Coast. At least that part bordering Los Angeles. An-geles. The $230,000 purse will be for the Maturity Stake, a four-year-old affair af-fair where Hill Prince will be the horse to beat now that Middle-ground's Middle-ground's racing career has been ended by a broken ankle. It seems impossible to realize that Calumet, is no longer at the top. You turn back and see Citation, Coaltown, Whirlaway, Armed, Ponder, Fervent, Fer-vent, Two Lea, Bewitch and many, many others who have dominated the tracks from here to nowhere and back. Ben and Jimmy were dividing their big stable and were mopping up. Both are among the great trainers train-ers and they had the horses, largely large-ly the offspring of Bull Lea. In 1947 Calumet piled up over $1,400,000, an all-time high. They won $1,269,710 in 1948 with Citation Cita-tion and Coaltown mopping up at every track. Ponder was a big money winner in 1949, ably abetted by Coaltown, and the stable's winnings totalled $1,-128,943. $1,-128,943. But suddenly something happened. Something always happens in racing. And not always al-ways for the financial best. Bull Lea suddenly quit sending those crack two-year-olds to the tracks two-year-olds who grew to be fine three-year-olds and four-year-olds. Calumet was certain Citation, rated with Man o 'War as a three-year-old, would collect most of the gold in California last winter. I saw him run several times, but the 14-month absence from competition had taken its cut. Citation was no longer Citation and then there was Noor who would have taxed Citation Cita-tion even at his best on the coast tracks. Citation may come back again later. So may Coaltown, who won 12 straight in 1949. Bowl Phantoms It is still much too early to start lining up the various Bowls. But you can gamble each Bowl has more than one hard-working inspector inspec-tor working on the job. There are now four veteran Bowls with several sev-eral added attractions. The four major Bowls are the Rose, Sugar, Cotton and Orange, at Pasadena, New Orleans, Dallas and Miami. The Rose Bowl is the most uncertain of the lot. The Pacific coast champion will be in doubt for several more weeks. If Ohio State wins the Big Nine or Big Ten title, the second-best team will head west. The Big Nine has no outstanding delegation today. It could be Michigan, Purdue, Ohio State, Wisconsin or some other. The Big Nine is in the throes of an off year, compared to its big years in the past. California and Stanford Stan-ford still lead the west coast people with Washington close up. The Sugar Bowl at New Orleans, another 75,000 crowd-getter, is eyeing eye-ing Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland, Mary-land, Oklahoma and either Texas or S.M.TJ. As the Cotton Bowl at Dallas is banking on Texas or S.M. U., unless Rice can slip in, it appears ap-pears that the winner here will remain re-main in Texas on New Year's Day. Just at the moment the Cotton, Sugar and Orange Bowls are all watching the same teams Texas, S.M.U., Rice, Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma and any outsider out-sider who may pop into the middle of the picture. The southwest now has more bowl entries than any other sector. What To Do? I checked last fall with graduate managers from Pennsylvania, Yale, UCLA and Southern California. Each figured television had cost them around 11,000 paid admissions each game especially each important im-portant game. This was equal to a loss of $33,000 a game. They were getting $77,000 a season for television tele-vision rights not nearly enough to make up the heavy deficit and keep the sport going in the schools. It may be in a few years the crowds will tire of television sets and come back to the playing play-ing grounds again. But as long as they are willing to bring the game to you for nothing I can't visualize huge mobs rushing out to pay for being crowded, shoved around and set down in uncomfortable seats. I'd rather have them bring it to me, than go out and look for it. Especially Especial-ly when it's just as good. Almost everyone would rather have television except the promoters promo-ters or owners. |